Some bargain sociology could identify an underlying tone of whiteboy grievance, so many born-rich heroes with infinite budgets and/or literal superpowers who brandish their inner hurt as a resumé-building Thing To Overcome. What the hell happened to our movie heroes? You can't ignore The Dark Knight, of course, a phenomenon whose very title roadmapped the self-consciously serious way forward. Police arrest him, and in the next scene he's merrily strolling out of the police station. He hijacks ENCOM's new product launch, a 10-figure heist at least. He speeds down a freeway, too fast for cops to catch him. Sam's a college dropout and an anti-corporate anarchist, two rebel iconographies that fade in the face of his dutiful dedication to his father's dreams (not to mention the constant product-placed DUCATI logo.) Here is how we meet this market-tested protagonist. His childhood home was right on the bay, come to think of it white people do like living by the water. He lives in waterfront property overlooking two bridges, the kind of lusciously appointed garage you would see filed on Instagram under #WarehouseChic. He drives his dad's motorcycle and might be wearing his dad's leather jacket. Tron: Legacy imagines Sam Flynn as a jaded millennial who is also, incongruously, an obsessive nostalgist. There is a subplot about how ENCOM is now run by vain business cads, and that subplot ends when Sam's dad's best friend takes over the company: An exact quote of the Wayne Enterprises boardroom thread from Batman Begins, complete with a Cillian Murphy cameo. Sam also radiates a then-familiar strain of bargain-bin Christopher Nolanism, another sorrowfully brash billionaire orphan performing extreme-sports activism and moaning that various adoring fathers didn't hug him enough. It's a void performance, begging you to grab a controller that isn't there. For most of his screen time, he's reacting to greenscreen nothing and asking questions so nobody in the audience gets confused. The movie straitjackets him with daddy issues and the Disney version of rebellious daredevil-ism. Disney just announced a thousand things, and Tron 3 wasn't one of them.Ī newscaster sets the emotional stakes of the film: "What will become of Flynn's legacy and the future of ENCOM will mostly likely depend on what becomes of this now orphaned little boy." Sam Flynn becomes a man, and Hedlund never looks comfortable for a second. It will happen, eventually, but the sun will also burn out eventually. There are eternal rumors about a follow-up. I recall Legacy looking pretty nifty on a big IMAX screen, but a recent pandemic rewatch was absolute death, one flat scene after another shot on a digital backlot that looks like pre-vis for a car commercial. Legacy was a hallmark entry in the post- Avatar 3D boom, a misbegotten technological revolution everyone would like to forget. It was the first big film Bridges starred in after his Crazy Heart Oscar anointed his fuzzy-uncle sixtysomething stardom - but it was released almost simultaneously with True Grit, a much better film with the good historical luck of inventing Hailee Steinfeld. The sequel is a shimmery footnote for Daft Punk, who were a few years away from really nailing the whole orchestral-electronica thing with Random Access Memories. Ten years later, Tron: Legacy has less of a legacy than the original film it worshipped.
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